osaycanuthink

occasionally caustic diatribes

Saturday, October 29, 2011

war on thrift

I can't bring myself to believe it is the federal government's policy to make all senior citizens totally dependent on Social Security and government largesse but when I see the devastation wrought on frugal people of my generation who laid by a nest egg so that, with interest on their funds, and Social Security they would have a comfortable retirement I must reappraise the situation. The Treasury has lowered interest rates so far that it is no longer possible to earn money on your savings. I am acquainted with seniors who are losing their homes because the income they expected from savings is no longer available to help pay the mortgage. They can't help grandkids or children. They must spend savings to stay afloat. This is hardly the result they expected when they put money aside each year. The government without, I hope , realizing it; is with this low interest rate policy transforming the industrious savers of the country from middle class to penurious wards of the state.

Monday, October 10, 2011

I'm Joining The Occupiers

The DOE loan guarantee program was supposed to help fledgling new green energy companies get started.We got the Solyndra illegal loan refinance mess. Then, just before authorization ran out a company named First Solar recieved 646 million for a project called Antelope Valley and 1.46 billion for a project called Desert Sunlight the first of these projects was sold to Exelon and the second to Obama's bosom buddy Jeffrey Immalt's G E. Two companies that could have self financed these projects. Another 1.24 billion went to something called Sunpower which was immediately sold to NRG. This all may be legal but what in hell is the federal government doing guaranteeing loans for the likes of GE , Exelon, and NRG.

Thursday, October 06, 2011

Self appointed Self perpetuating Elite

The sociology, economic , law and soft science schools of the Northeast and their graduates share one trait, They beleive that the cachet of Harvard , Yale, Princeton, Cornell immediately confers upon them intellectual superiority to the benighted massses who attend state universities. These institutions are supposed to be incubators of original thought but are temples of conformity and political correctness. I find it difficult to discern any change in the law schools from the sophmoric ideals that I held at one time(1952) or anything original in economics since Gailbraith. This is not an indictment of the hard sciences at these institutions ,MIT, Princeton ,Cornell do fine work. It is the supernummerary departments that perpetuate old, fashionable ideas and incestuosly promote their own in nepotic lockkstep.Washington D.C. is submerged in this old boy , old girl, pool of academician conformity.